George haltered the pony to the tree and followed Jacky, who struck farther into the wood.  After a most disagreeable scramble at the other side of the wood Jacky stopped and put his finger to his lips.  They both went cautiously out of the wood, and mounting a bank that lay under its shelter they came plump upon a little party of blacks, four male and three female.  The women were seated round a fire burning beef and gnawing the outside laminae, then putting it down to the fire again.  The men, who always serve themselves first, were lying gorged—­but at sight of George and Jacky they were on their feet in a moment and their spears poised in their hands.

Jacky walked down the bank and poured a volley of abuse into them.  Between two of his native sentences he uttered a quiet aside to George, “Suppose black fellow lift spear you shoot him dead,” and then abused them like pickpockets again and pointed to the make-thunder with two mouths in George’s hand.

After a severe cackle on both sides the voices began to calm down like water going off the boil, and presently soft low gutturals passed in pleasant modulation.  Then the eldest male savage made a courteous signal to Jacky that he should sit down and gnaw.  Jacky on this administered three kicks among the gins and sent them flying, then down he sat and had a gnaw at their beef—­George’s beef, I mean.  The rage of hunger appeased, he rose, and with the male savages took the open country.  On the way he let George know that these black fellows were of his tribe, that they had driven off the cattle and that he had insisted on restitution—­which was about to be made; and sure enough, before they had gone a mile they saw some beasts grazing in a narrow valley.  George gave a shout of joy, but counting them he found fifteen short.  When Jacky inquired after the others the blacks shrugged their shoulders.  They knew nothing more than this, that wanting a dinner they had driven off forty bullocks; but finding they could only eat one that day they had killed one and left the others, of whom some were in the place they had left them; the rest were somewhere, they didn’t know where—­far less care.  They had dined, that was enough for them.

When this characteristic answer reached George he clinched his teeth and for a moment felt an impulse to make a little thunder on their slippery black carcasses, but he groaned instead and said, “They were never taught any better.”

Then Jacky and he set to work to drive the cattle together.  With infinite difficulty they got them all home by about eleven o’clock at night.  The next day up with the sun to find the rest.  Two o’clock—­and only one had they fallen in with, and the sun broiled so that lazy Jacky gave in and crept in under the beast for shade, and George was fain to sit on his shady side with moody brow and sorrowful heart.

Presently Jacky got up.  “I find one,” said he.

“Where? where?” cried George, looking all round.  Jacky pointed to a rising ground at least six miles off.